Why the cheetah’s cheeks are stained

When we see a cheetah we always use the two tear marks that run down their faces as an identifying feature against the leopard’s spotted face. These tear marks came from something very specific and this Zulu tale tells us how it came to be that the cheetah’s cheeks are stained.

The hyenas always used to be very good hunters but these days we mostly see them scavenging. One day a particularly lazy Hyena was sitting underneath a big shady tree and was gazing down on a herd of fat impala wishing he could have their meat without having to expend the energy to hunt them.

While he watched the Impala graze peacefully, he noticed a slight difference in the colour of the grass downwind of the Impala. There he spied a female Cheetah stalking her prey. She was very patient and waited until there was one foolish Impala who moved too far from the herd.

She sprang with such grace and speed that the Impala did not even know what had hit it. The Hyena was in awe of the amazing hunting skill shown by the cheetah and wished he had a mother like the Cheetah.

He watched some more and soon saw the female Cheetah bring three little cubs to the meat to come feed. Here he hatched a devious plan. He would wait for the Cheetah to go to the watering hole to drink and he would go and steal a baby for himself and raise it as his own so that one day he might have a cheetah to hunt for him.

When she had moved off, he went down and chose one then the other and finally decided to take all three as this would be better than just one. When the Cheetah came back, she found her babies gone and started wailing and crying for her lost little ones. Her crying brought the wise old Baboon down from his tree and he told her that he had seen everything.

Baboon called the rest of his troupe together and they all took off to go and find the babies. Eventually they found the little ones tied to a tree with the lazy Hyena not too far off, sleeping as was his way. All the Baboons took sticks and beat the Hyena for stealing the babies! To this day the Hyena still walks with a limp because of the pain from that beating. The baboons then returned the babies o their mother, but because of her long wailing, the tears had stained her cheeks like we see them today.